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Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Preservation and Proposition

Our mission is to document the pivotal Second Amendment events that occurred in Frontier Mercersburg, and its environs, and to heighten awareness of the importance of these events in the founding of our Nation.

We are dedicated to the preservation of the place where the Second Amendment was "born" and to the proposition that the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms") is the keystone of our Liberty and the Republic.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Pime Minister Stephen Harper continues to engage the United Nations on his own terms, refusing to sign a landmark UN treaty regulating the arms trade while pushing his maternal health agenda.

Canada is holding off signing the treaty, citing concern over how it affects firearm owners' even though the United States has now joined the global accord over the objections of that country's powerful gun lobby.

Canada's reluctance to join the multilateral effort on the arms trade is a tacit example of how Mr. Harper, far from the biggest fan of the UN, prefers to engage with the international body at arm's length. For the third year in a row, Mr. Harper declined to address the main body of the UN, the General Assembly. Instead, he stayed on the margins of the conclave, holding bilateral meetings and promoting Canada's maternal health efforts but steering clear of its highest-profile venue.
On Wednesday, Mr. Harper made a short speech at an event devoted to bettering the health of mothers and children, long a priority of his government, which has pledged $3-billion to the cause. Speaking in a conference room at UN headquarters, he urged the international community to redouble its drive to reduce maternal mortality. The rate is falling, he noted, but not fast enough to meet the targets set by world leaders for 2015.

These goals are literally vital, he said. Degrees of failure are not measured in dollars, they are measured in thousands of lives.

Flanked by the Prime Minister of Tanzania and philanthropist Melinda Gates, Mr. Harper served as the co-host of the event. He spoke for 10 minutes and underlined the need to make a final, vigorous and decisive effort toward meeting the 2015 goals. Later in the afternoon, he held meetings with the president of Senegal and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The Harper government has limited patience for the UN. It is skeptical of the utility of an unwieldy body with 193 member states that gives dictators a forum to speak, but at the same time recognizes the UN has a role to play on matters such as the bloody civil war in Syria.

Mr. Harper has not addressed the General Assembly since 2010, when Canada was mounting a bid for a temporary seat on the Security Council. In a surprise defeat, it lost to Portugal a month later.

It has never been the practice of prime ministers to make a speech to the General Assembly every year, Mr. Harper noted before leaving for New York. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, in remarks on Wednesday, said none of his counterparts from other countries had remarked upon Mr. Harper's absence from the podium.

The same is not true for the government's opponents. Instead of co-hosting a meeting, he should be addressing the General Assembly and laying out Canada's foreign policy, said NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar. It's empty-chair diplomacy. We're just not showing up.

Some experts note that the Harper government has made a break from the past in its dealings with the UN. Previous governments have recognized the shortcomings of the UN as well as the opportunities it offers for Canada to exercise influence and cultivate relationships, said Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa.

Canada is the seventh-largest financial contributor to the UN, noted Fen Hampson, head of the global security program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ont. I think the Prime Minister's view is, there is precious little thanks for that, Mr. Hampson said. I think he feels quite strongly and it's quite evident by his behaviour that the UN as defined by its major organs, namely the General Assembly and the Security Council, is dysfunctional.

Canada will be represented by Mr. Baird at the UN General Assembly he is scheduled to address the chamber on Monday. He has a full slate of meetings at the UN and on Wednesday took part in an event to highlight the issue of forced marriages for young girls, a topic on which he has become increasingly vocal.

Mr. Baird brushed off questions about whether Canada would sign the UN Arms Trade Treaty, saying that the government's consultations on the topic remain in the early stages.

The Harper government considers Canadian firearms owners an important part of its political support base and in 2012 fulfilled a key political promise by dismantling a federal long-gun registry, calling it an unnecessary burden.

The Arms Trade Treaty, which only covers cross-border trade and aims to keep weapons out of the hands of human-rights abusers and criminals, still requires ratification by the U.S. Senate and has been attacked by the influential American gun-rights group, the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Rick Roth, a spokesman for Mr. Baird, said Ottawa is still studying whether joining the accord would have consequences for Canadians. It is important that such a treaty not affect lawful and responsible firearms owners nor discourage the transfer of firearms for recreational uses such as sport shooting and hunting.

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It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.